That’s Maths III by Peter Lynch: Maths for everyone including hardcore devotees

Full disclosure, I know the author and Irish Times science page columnist Peter Lynch well. He pioneered numerical weather prediction in Met Éireann; that's forecasting the weather using observations, the laws of physics and supercomputers. Lynch's mathematical modelling of the atmosphere has paved the way for three-day warnings notifications from our Met Éireann app and also storm naming. It's time for Storm Peter maybe?

In That’s Maths III, you will find some chapters on meteorology and the topic du jour, climate change, but only as a small subset of an eclectic range. This book is a collection of 64 short essays, each about four pages long, and covers a myriad of mathematical topics, pure and applied, ranging from prime numbers to poetry.

There are equations certainly but lots of interesting and historical and biographical details too. Quirky stories abound such as that of the English lady, Dr Muriel Bristol, who claimed she could blind taste from a cup of tea whether the milk was poured in first or the tea. A short list of references to literature accompanies each article and makes the book a convenient starting point for further mathematical and historical explorations.

Lynch dives straight in with the equations so maybe a few warm-up chapters would have been easier for the general reader, but don’t let this put you off as there are many chapters with no equations. Think of this as a book of short stories with some striking pictures, each one unrelated so that you literally can pick a chapter at random or as the title might grab you.

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If you are serious about mathematics the final 16 chapters marked with an “*” are designed to pique your curiosity and promise to be a real pleasure. Especially bright young students looking for a project, or those studying undergraduate maths interested in mathematical exotica, Lynch assures, me “will be hooked” and muses wistfully, “I wish I had such a book when I was young”.

Every year the literary pages are crammed with recommended “light” summer reading so here’s a pitch to you to add this one to your pile. Even if you’ve forgotten every differential equation, statistical sampling or Gaussian curve that was ever bet into you, I feel certain that you will enjoy this book. Look, the bottom line is you can just skip over the squiggly bits of equations and read the text and enjoy the stories. While this may be sacrilegious to Lynch, that’s what I mostly did (sorry, not sorry, Peter!). For the hardcore maths devotees you have the last 16 chapters to feed the beast.

I revere George Eliot but I have to say That's Maths III is one exception to her advice in 1860 of never to judge a book by its cover. Let me praise this striking and enticing cover designed by Cressida Lynch. It's a detail of a rogue wave from the famous 19th-century woodcut known as The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai – and you can read about freak waves in chapter 23. But what really makes this cover so striking is the hot, fuchsia pink sky overlaid with fancy maths equations. Maths for girls anyone?

Keeping with the actual physical book, it’s a handy A5 size for taking with you on your travels and is especially enticing for dipping in for 10 minutes here and there.

If you remember quite liking maths at school a long time ago then this is the book to rekindle your interest. Equally if you are still feeling some PTSD at being taught “differentiation from first principles” on a Friday afternoon, then this book could actually cure you. And if you actively work in maths then you really will love this book. Mathematics reaches into every corner of our lives, whether we know it or not, and this book, and books like this, can help us understand how our world works in an enjoyable and stimulating way.

So maybe buy two copies . . . one for yourself to while away the long, hot summer days (that’s not a prediction just a hope . . . even a weather forecaster can hope) and one for a young person in your circle who likes maths. Oh, and if you need a fix of fiction may I recommend Middlemarch as well, Eliot’s masterpiece. Both books could for sure engross you for much of the summer, especially if it happens to rain which should be well predicted by the Met Éireann app thanks in part to the work of Lynch.

Evelyn Cusack is Met Éireann’s head of forecasting

That's Maths III by Peter Lynch is published by Logic Press – information is available at http://www.logicpress.ie